Sometimes the online world reveals unsuspected parallel dimensions. This is an unknown restyle of Neural independently (and secretly as we never knew about it) made by NY-based Motion and Graphic Designer, Clarke Blackham. Very nicely made, perhaps only a bit glossier for the magazine’s line, it testifies once more how even your most familiar outcomes can have another life somewhere else.

The value of craft after software sounds rampant sometimes, expressing the freedom of escaping repetitive taps and clicks to accomplish some assumed tasks. Mixing media, electricity, electronics, mechanics and inert objects Graham Dunning has realised a structured track/performance/open script in his “Mechanical Techno: Ghost in the Machine Music.” More than a proof of concept a machine music declination.

Isn’t ASCII Art a perfect form of “graffiti” in 2010s? The 8-bit aesthetics is among the strongest visual references connecting the analogue recent past with the omni-digital present, so why not adopt it to finally have some public art embedded in the present? In Varberg, Sweden, 2016, the GOTO80 crew (feat: Karin Andersson) did it, choosing (not by accident) the Mo Soul Amiga-font.

The relationship between Andy Warhol and personal computers (becoming quite popular during his last years) has been only partially investigated beyond his Amiga works. In November 2015, Sotheby’s sold his “Apple (from Ads)” (acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas) for 910.000 USD, and in catalogue’s notes Warhol tells about his meeting with Steve Jobs insisting to give him one and showing him how to draw (even if still in black and white): “we went into Sean [John Lennon’s son]’s bedroom–and there was a kid there setting up the Apple computer that Sean had gotten as a present, the Macintosh model. I said that once some man had been calling me a lot wanting to give me one, but that I’d never called him back or something, and then the kid looked up and said, ‘Yeah, that was me. I’m Steve Jobs.’ And he looked so young, like a college guy. And he told me that he would still send me one now. And then he gave me a lesson on drawing with it. It only comes in black and white now, but they’ll make it soon in color…I felt so old and out of it with this young whiz guy right there who helped invent it.”

Minority Report comes closer… Three huge screens at Birmingham New Street railway station are scanning passers-by and play advertisements accordingly. http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/new-street-station-advertising-screens-9920400

Ars Electronica 2006: Simplicity

The 2006 edition of Ars Electronica is taking place in Linz from 31 August to 5th September. Blessed this year even in its title/topic (‘Simplicity’) by John Maeda (one of the regular contributor in the last years) and his most recent book, ‘The Laws of Simplicity’, the festival has commissioned him the opening symposium. The rest of the program includes also: ‘Moon Ride’ by Assocreation (cyclists feeding a huge battery with their motions and the resulting energy liberated as light at night), the showcase of the University of Art and Design Helsinki and the Interface Culture exhibition of the Art University of Linz, the presentation of the Upgrade! international network of events and of the just closed ISEA. The usual mini-presentation at the Electrolobby, the computer animation projection, the sunday digital music night, the Radio FRO conference, the noticed by few Klangpark sound art event, and the exhibition at the Ars Electronica Center and at the OK Centrum are running as always in the last editions (2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005). Saturday will be celebrated in a monastery in the country (Stift St. Florian), out of the usual paths and betting on an unusual location for a crowd usually attracted more for meeting each other than for running from one event to the next.